Is Star Wars an Art Film?

Boy the critics seem to have a lot of complaints. Sure they are saying nice things about Episode III, but not without slamming I and II. I must say I'm baffled by the complaints. Actually, I do recognize them. They sound like the complaints made about impressionist art.

MSN had a piece on the new records by Moby and Beck. It includes this line on Moby: "A second, mostly inconsequential bonus disc offers ambient soundscapes." I'm not into ambient soundscapes, but there is a whole genre devoted to it, with radio shows, internet sites, and apparently artists like Moby work in the area.

Art is not about satisfying a mass audience, its about satisfying the artist. Entertainment is about satisfying a mass audience. From the beginning of Lucas' work, his early films, his problem with the studios, the whole of his career, the complaints have been the same. He was interviewed on Charlie Rose last year, and they replayed the interview on one of our local PBS outlets. The studio didn't like American Graffiti because it lacked character and plot. Gee no one has ever complained about Lucas' other work lacking character and plot have they? Maybe, just maybe, Lucas, as an artist, isn't interested in character and plot, and his notion of story lies elsewhere. Perhaps in the feeling of a picture and the sense of it from a distance. The things that he is hailed for, his use of music (the studios complained about the music), his technical and visual innovations, and his use of mythology (Campbell has referred to him as his best student) are what he has tried to do. He has consciously rejected an emphasis on the normal narrative devices. Further, he's tried to insulate himself from the pressures that would force him to adapt to the expectations of a mass audience or studio executives.

Complaining about Lucas' very style of making movies is like complaining because you like westerns better and would have preferred Ep II as a western with cowboys and sixguns.

Lucas' films are not entertainment aimed at a mass audience, they are cult films whose cult happens to be very large. People don't dress up as characters of mere entertainments, Star Wars therefore should be considered an art film with a cult following. A very large cult following.